


So, the Car Broke Down...

by AirFireWaterEarth



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5148263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirFireWaterEarth/pseuds/AirFireWaterEarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiro's habits of ignoring signs of engine failure get him and the team stranded in a small town called Sugar Rush. The detour should last only about 2 hours, but those hours stretch to weeks, as they agree to help their mechanic, Vanellope von Schweetz, in fixing a race car and fulfilling her dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So, the Car Broke Down...

**So the Car Broke Down…**

**Chapter 1**

**Two Cars**

 

“I told you, we should have brought materials.” Hiro complained.

 

Honey Lemon sighed. 

 

“Hiro, that would evade the point of a road trip.” 

 

“Well, what was the little man gonna do; build a robot while we drive on the freeway?” Wasabi complained.

 

Fred nodded, “Yeah, now we’re… uh… wherever we are.”

 

Hiro flailed his arms.

 

“You see you? Do you get my point? Now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere having to go to some inept mechanics! If they have one.”

 

Honey Lemon sighed and sat on the yellow hood of the car. Fred hesitated in comforting her and Wasabi was still distracted waiting for Gogo to come back. Hiro heaved what seemed like the millionth sigh.

 

“I’m sorry, that was… harsh.” Hiro apologized. 

 

He didn’t like apologizing, but these people were his friends. Heck, they stuck with him as a moody, puberty infected teen that lost his brother. Hiro had no right to stand there with his nose up.

 

Honey Lemon shot him a faint smile and looked back down as nothingness settled over them. It lasted until Gogo returned with news.

 

“So they’ve got a mechanics in town. They’re sending one of their workers down to help us, but we’ve gotta push it.” she said, nodding her head to a small building maybe a mile or two away, “Hope you guy’s have been working out.”

 

An unanimous groan erupted from the group, as they waited in an uneasy anticipation for when they had to haul the car up there. Mumbles about it being a bad idea to keep driving when the warning signs were clear (admittedly Hiro’s decision) and other topics related to that were heard. There was one last groan when the service person arrived.

 

The employee, a short, teen or young adult with raven-black hair poorly tied into a ponytail and an oil smudge on her nose, rolled her eyes at them.

 

“Aw, c’mon. There’s six of us and that’s tiny little baby car.” She rolled up her brown coat sleeves and walked behind the car, “I once had to push up a flugg’n Jeep with only the one-legged kid that drove it.”

 

The team got behind the car and began pushing. The employee had been right about one thing; it could have been worse. But, after the first half hour, Hiro was ready to say screw it, keep the car, and they’d just go buy plane tickets to get home. Luckily, it wasn’t much further after that, and they were able to get it into the shop.

 

The employee crossed her arms.

 

“See, not so bad. Now I’ll get to work and I’ll have it done in, maybe, an hour and a half.” she said with a shrug.

 

Hiro cringed. Hour and a half? What the heck were they going to do in an hour and a half?

 

“Can’t you speed that up?” Hiro asked.

 

The employee rolled her eyes.

 

“Hm, I dunno. Lemme ask the car and see what she thinks.” she leaned over and mockingly asked the car, “Hey, you think you could fix yourself?” A beat of silence “I’m going to have take that as a no.”

 

Hiro growled, but Gogo put a hand on his shoulder.

 

“Eyh, we just wanted to know.” she said, and popped a bubble.

 

The employee shrugged.

 

“Sorry. We only get a couple out-of-towners every so often. I mean, as weird as that sounds,” she added sarcastically, gesturing the empty land around them. “You could probably go into town, though. It’s not too far, just hard to see ‘cause of the forest.” 

 

Honey Lemon smiled gratefully.

 

“Thanks, uh…” she trailed off, hoping for a name.

 

“Vanellope. And before you start calling me ‘Penelope’ let me make it clear that it’s ‘Vanilla’ and ‘Penelope’ combined. Vanellope.” Vanellope explained.

 

Fred stared at her for a moment.

 

“Uh… okay. Whatever you say Ms. Mechanic.”

 

Wasabi sighed.

 

“Don’t worry; we got it.”

 

Vanellope gave a curt nod and grabbed her tools to get to work. The team stayed a curious moment longer before walking off. They stopped, though, when they overheard a conversation.

 

“Vanellope! What are you doing?” said a girl Vanellope’s (and Hiro’s if you wanted an estimation)  age whined. She had nearly white blonde hair and was wearing all pink. She also didn’t look to work there, as she looked pristine.

 

Vanellope deadpanned, “Um, my job.”

 

“Well, what about the other car?”

 

Vanellope looked up from the hood of her car and pointed at the girl with her screw driver.

 

“ _That_ was _your_ job.”

 

The girl growled.

 

“Well, now it’s yours.”

 

Vanellope shrugged.

 

“Fine, Taffyta. More pay for me.”

 

Taffyta sneered. “Like hell it is.”

 

Hiro stared even after Taffyta had walked off. That wasn’t— Gogo tapped his shoulder and nodded her head in the direction of the gang further off and heading to town. Hiro took one more glance at Vanellope, who’s left palm was going to have deep, crescent-moon imprints in them in a minute. He bit his lip before returning to his friends, thinking to himself that maybe they should "lose track of time” and be an hour or so late.

 

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

 

Hiro ended up having to tell the group what he’d witnessed, because Wasabi was so inane that they had to be there are the hour and a half mark. He was able to push it over and, by seeing Vanellope’s distress, Hiro was glad.

 

Hiro had walked up to the front desk and given the plate number and ID so that he could get the car. The receptionist was a hulking man, who Hiro could tell that management just decided to use because they were low on receptionists; this man obviously worked on cars as well.

 

Hiro filled out release forms and Honey Lemon gave her ID to prove the car was hers as the receptionist, Ralph was what the name-tag said, rang Vanellope up. Vanellope came in stumbling a few minutes later, sorting through about ten different keys.

 

“Sweet mother of monkey milk, what do people do, pour smog into their pipes themselves?” Vanellope muttered as she finally found the keys with an “Aha!”

 

Ralph looked at Vanellope frazzled state (it was hard to find Vanellope’s exact skin color and Hiro was beginning to wonder if brown had really been the coat’s starting point). and sighed.

 

“You gotta stop doing favors for those kids. You’re good, but you can only take so much at once.” he said.

 

Vanellope muttered, “I have to, if I wanna keep this job.”

 

Vanellope flung the car keys in the San Fransokyo’s residents general direction and begun walking into the back.

 

Hiro handed the paper over to Honey Lemon to sign. It was just pen scrapes until there was a shriek heard from where Vanellope had left to. Ralph hurried over to the scene and the team hesitantly followed.

 

They didn’t see much, but they heard Ralph’s infuriated bellows. When Hiro and the others got closer, they realized that there were teens completely destroying what looked to be in the design for a race car. In the group, was no other than Taffyta, the girl that’d been harassing Vanellope beforehand. As a shock from Ralph’s intimidation, they ran off, leaving a trembling Vanellope with grit teeth and glossy eyes.

 

Ralph looked at the mess and ran in head through his hair.

 

“Vanellope… This… I’m so…”

 

“Four months.” Vanellope said quietly. “Four months it took me to build this ‘waste of space’.” Vanellope spoke the last part with finger quotes.

 

Ralph tried to offer sympathy, but a short in blue man with only a hammer in his tool bet walked out from the other end of the garage and spoke quietly.

 

“Hey, Ralph? They… need you at station 23.”

 

Ralph looked like he wanted to brush it off, but, by the sad look the man was giving him, it seemed that Ralph had no choice. He ruffled Vanellope hair and gave a half smile as he walked off. The man in blue looked at Vanellope with a look of condolence and both men were off.

 

Hiro and the team just stood there, some even with their mouths’ partially open. Vanellope growled and kicked a scrap left of her car. The she let out a mildy contained scream and sat down on a desk, her hands clutching to top of her hair. Finally, she noticed the group and sneered.

 

“What’re you looking at?”

 

In all honesty, Hiro had no idea.

 

Honey Lemon walked over.

 

“I’m sorry, hun. About the car. You could always make a new one—“

 

“No, I can’t.” Vanellope said abruptly, shrugging Honey Lemon’s hand off her shoulder. “Listen, you look nice, but I have no idea who you are. I don’t need your sympathy.”

 

Vanellope sent a longing gaze at the near empty car frame.

 

“That car was my ticket out of here.” she explained slowly, “If I won the race that takes place in two weeks, I’d have enough money to leave this hell hole. At the very least, I’d get sponsors.”

 

Gogo seemed to connect to that comment on a personal level, loving car races and all. The others really looked like they got it as well. Hiro would just hate to imagine losing something that he worked so hard on. They weren’t by themselves though. At least the team could rely on each other to remake whatever they lost. It’d probably be even better. And faster. And…

 

 

What if…

 

No! They didn’t even know this chick.

 

But…

 

That was just horrible…

 

Hiro swallowed and took a deep breath.

 

“We could… help you remake it.”

 

Honey Lemon looked at Hiro as if what he said was genius (well, most of the time it was, but...) and a good amount of the team didn’t exactly look appalled. Wasabi did look skeptical though. But the looks from the other members cooled that down.

 

Now Vanellope was the only skeptical one.

 

“Really? A race car in _two weeks_?” Vanellope asked warily.

 

Hiro shrugged.

 

“We’ve done more in less.”

 

The group slowly agreed and Fred began to get excited.

 

“It could be like those cars in Head Rush and stuff like that! It’s going to be amazing.”

 

Vanellope gave a look.

 

“Uh, you’re just visitors; don’t have someplace to, I don’t know, _visit_?”

 

It was Hiro’s turn to give her a look, “Hey, do you want our help or not?”

 

It took a moment to realize that Vanellope’s real trouble was swallowing her pride. But there was definitely something desperate in the way she acted. She needed them.

 

“Alright. Warning, though: this is all we’ve got to work with.” Vanellope spread her arms out, gesturing around the garage.

 

She was right…

 

Okay, so this was going to be a little harder than he’d thought.

 

**A/N: This didn’t go over well on FF, so it was deleted. I realized I had this on file and was like ‘well, what the hell’, so I posted it here. I don’t plan for this fic to be very long. Five chapters, maybe.**

**Note: Other reasons why this race is so important will be explained later on. There is no “Big Hero 6” in this. They just ratted Callaguan out and authorities took care of the rest. Other descriptions of Vanellope’s town will be made as well.**


End file.
